


Plague and Bees

by Arioch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Features Historical Inaccuracies, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Plague Doctor - Freeform, Pre-Slash, Valentine's Day inspired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 07:04:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arioch/pseuds/Arioch
Summary: When Jack falls ill displaying early symptoms of the plague, his family sends for a plague doctor who has an unorthodox pastime when he is not meeting patients.





	Plague and Bees

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Aenva](triruntu.tumblr.com) for helping me with beta!

Jack had been feeling unwell for about a week, but his condition went from irritating to worrying when he puked out his guts right next to Andrea’s stash of pigments. It was disruptive enough to actually make Andrea stop ogling his current model and turn towards Jack.

“I think I should go home.” Jack had suggested, wiping away flecks of vomit from his chin with delirious calm. Andrea and his apprentices had all been staring aghast at the nearly ruined supplies. Jack winced. The archbishop had paid for these costly acquisitions himself when he had commissioned Andrea to paint the church murals. They were worth more than a year’s wage for Jack. Jack had fled the cathedral without waiting for a reply, stumbling thanks to the damn affliction from God knows where. Andrea’s scream of despair echoed behind him.

Somehow, he had safely stumbled home without getting mugged on the way through Firenze’s bustling streets. Jack certainly hadn’t been paying enough attention to be able to defend himself; in fact he barely remembered anything else from that afternoon. Maybe at some point he had laid down to sleep in his bed, but it was just as likely that a servant had helped him into his poster bed and pulled the downy bedding over him.

On the second day of bed rest, his family finally resigned hope and called for a doctor. Jack was informed thusly by a servant calling to him through the closed door in the early morning. His parents had held out longer on the expense than Jack had anticipated. He had been left to rest without company in his room for several days and the most entertainment he got when he was lucid was witnessing the rats fight for food scraps on the market square below his window. His own meals were delivered on a tray that was left in front of the door. Jack fetched them and replaced the empty dishes on the tray. A bed pan took care of his other needs.

Privately, he lamented never learning how to read fluidly enough to occupy himself now. Not that he could begrudge any of the servants or his family their distance. It was likely just a nasty cold, but the illness resembled the early stages of the plague.  It didn’t hurt to be cautious – Jack had done so himself in the past when friends fell ill.

As the sun sunk down from his midday zenith and shadows stretched out again, a knock sounded on his door. “Come in!” Jack coughed into a kerchief.

His doctor had to let himself into the room while Jack filled a mug with water from a pitcher on the commode by his bed side. The pottery felt heavier today and his hands shook fearsomely when they took the weight. Only after he had finished, he turned around to get a good look at the doctor.

The man his parents had sent for was not the general physician that had treated Jack from childhood on, but rather one of Firenze’s plague doctor. He was dressed in a heavy coat of waxed leather that followed his form tightly and wore kid skin gloves. His face was hidden by a hat with wide brim and the infamous mask of the profession. A white bird visage with a long beak, naturally, and glass lenses guarded the eyes. Against the backdrop of yellow wallpaper he was out of place, a veritable spectre coming back from the churchyard to haunt the living.

Jack couldn’t help recoiling from the image presented. It wasn’t so much the look that scared him but rather what it symbolized. Death. Hopelessness when the doctors left another house to be isolated or with the bodies of a whole family in tow. And yet, with him the doctor brought a plethora of scents. Juniper, lemon balm and mint along with cloves, storax and laudanum. The heady mixture bleared Jack’s senses as if he were buried under a mountain of invisible down.

The doctor sat down on a stool within arm’s length to the bed, resting his cane in his lap. “ _Signore_ Morrison, how are you feeling?” He asked with his masked head cocked to the side just so.

Jack swallowed and carefully took another sip of water. “Like shit. I can’t breathe right and I have a constant headache, no matter how much I drink. I feel so weak and cold that my body keeps shivering, but I am told I feel hot to the touch.” At first, all of the symptoms had seemed so normal. He had dismissed it as his usual late November flu, until it started getting worse. 

The plague doctor noted down a few lines on a sheet of paper. “I see. Have you tried consuming the water of cooked willow bark yet to combat the head pains?”

Jack shook his head.

The doctor nodded. “See that you do try it out later then. For now, however, I want you to demonstrate a few things for me.” He began with bidding Jack to a number exercises. Following the wooden wand as it moved with his eyes (easy enough, even if the headaches kept Jack off balance), breathing deeply and letting the doctor listen to it (a big, bronze auricular tube was pressed on Jack’s chest and the doctor counted along to something only he heard), show  your tongue to the doctor (Jack found little problem with this direction).

“Mh.” The doctor hummed after each new task as he scribbled down the results, neither confirming Jack’s affliction with the plague nor denying it. That his own house physician had done the same tests not days ago didn’t seem to constitute any obstacle for him.

“How can you stay so calm?” Jack blurted out.

“Huh?” For the first time today, the doctor looked less than utterly bored, even if the mask shielded his visage. His hands fluttered like the wings of a nervous crow on a tree.

Jack _liked_ it. “I said,” he spoke calmly, “you seem untouched by whatever results you get. Even though I could be another plague dead tomorrow. So why aren’t you scared?”

Instead of answering, the doctor whipped out a white kerchief and wiped off any saliva left on the copper thong he had used to hold down Jack’s tongue to inspect the inside of his throat. A nervous habit, to clean so diligently without moving an inch. “I knew what I signed up for. The fee of our noble city is generous enough to provide me with everything I need to fulfill my duties. Of course, I must stay isolated in return so that I will not carry the Black Death with me to other patients.”

Just like the danger of infection kept his family away from Jack. He had been alone for not even a whole week and was already more impaired by the forced idleness and loneliness than the actual illness. How much worse must it be for a man that needed to remain alone for years?

“The miasma!” He blurted out. Then he took a moment to wonder where that thought had come from and what he was even planning to say. “The plague’s miasma, did you ever see it? Smell it?” It was a dumb question yet nothing better came to mind. Miasma, as every child in Firenze knew, was the noxious night air bearing the Black Death and spread the infection. But how would a plague doctor be able to see it when it rose at night? And how would he smell it without falling ill himself?

Without doubt, Jack had been rude to query the sensible doctor in such a frank manner, but Jack was not unused to embarrassing himself, so he endured the silence. He might as well learn about the sickness if he had contracted the Black Death. Maybe there was some sort of cure-all he hadn’t heard about yet.

The doctor stared at him and Jack felt like he was judged and found to be wanting common sense. It was almost as if he could see the thin straws of hope Jack was trying to cling to. Instead of humouring Jack, the doctor decided to switch back to the initial reason of his visit. “In any case, the results of the examinations don’t rule out the Black Death yet, unfortunately. We will have to use a rather young trial to get clarity.”

Oh! So there was some new untested medicine he could try. Would it be a golden apple or an expensive herb? Or it could be something painful like bloodletting to balance his spirits. The doctor rummaged through the hefty equipment bag he had brought with him. There was the clinking of glass being with metal and the more annoying clanking of metal on metal. Jack’s imagination was already trying to conjure what new instrument of terror he could produce from its depths.  Whatever it was, Jack was determined to abide the method.

“A-ha!” the doctor finally shouted and pulled out a strange glass vessel. The outside was a ball with two openings, one of which was a spout. Inside, the openings connected and formed two chambers from glass on the inside. One of these was empty but the other was filled with three bees. Bees. Bees!

Jack took the glass ball with shaking hands when the doctor passed it into his hands. He held it with caution and tried to keep both openings turned away from himself. He failed. “What’s that?” Jack asked, not really listening. It was an absurd object as if it plucked from an apocalyptic dream and he couldn’t see what purpose it would serve, if any.

“The surest way to determine whether you are suffering from the Black Death or not. Please blow  air from your lungs into the spout.”

“How would you even tell?” Jack did not blow into the device because, really, the bees had no need to be this close to his face. He appreciated sweet honey. He also had a healthy respect for the industrious insects that produced it.

The doctor grumbled. “I don’t tell anything, that’s the whole point. The bees tell us.”

“The bees?” Jack was going to insist until the arrival of judgement day that his voice didn’t break at this particular moment. The bees were humming inside the glass apparatus.

“The bees.” His doctor nodded, his shoulders squaring up. He looked like he was preparing to wrestle Death on Jack’s behalf. Jack wondered if he looked at every patient like that. It would be reassuring him more, if the doctor was not also preparing to wrestle bees into his face.

The plague doctor went on. “They are, after all, industrious, cleanly and godly creatures. Evil repulses them because it is not in their nature. When a person breathes out air mixed together with the vile miasma of the plague, the bees will duly notice and vacate the first inner chamber in favour of the second.” He paused his recital and added, more flustered: “It is so because the, uh, bees are able to smell much better than humans can.”

Jack turned over the glass ball once more, trying to stall even as he knew he would do it, eventually.  The bees, at least, were not trying to vacate the glass container. “I blow into the spout, right?”

The doctor nodded.

The three bees were still crawling over themselves in the first inner glass chamber. If they were paying any attention to the outside, Jack had no notion of it. He sighed, inhaled, hoped he would not swallow any bees and blew into the spout.

“Very good, _signore_ Morrison.” The doctor gently took the glass orb back and cradled it in his lap.

“What happens now?”

“Now, we wait for a little while. Sometimes the bees are not moving as urgently.” And with that, an awkward silence spread between them.

Jack glanced towards the window. The sun was slowly sinking towards the horizon and the soft red of dusk shimmered on the edges of Firenze’s roofs. In short, the view was striking. Maybe when he went back to work, he could try his hand at replicating these colours.

A rustle from the side of the bed had Jack whip his head around. The plague doctor was removing his bird-like mask and put it down to the side.

“Now, I am able to gladly proclaim you free of the Black Death.” He held up the glass container in which the bees hadn’t moved. Jack however was too busy studying the doctor’s face to pay any attention to the good news.

His complexion was dark, enough so that Jack guessed his lineage must trace back to a family from the Emirate of Granada. The beard he wore was carefully cultivated around the chin while his cheeks remained bare. Maybe he hadn’t kept the religion of his ancestors. His eyes were large and chestnut brown; his features defined thoroughly. He was striking enough that Andrea would gladly ask him to pose for a picture of Saladin or similar characters. 

“Not what you expected, I guess.” The doctor smiled with some good humour. “The mask hides my heritage well enough whenever I go about my business, but it is burning. I hope you don’t mind me cooling off now that there is no danger of contagion.”

Jack shook his head mutely, still too mesmerised by the some of the most handsome features he had ever had the privilege to see outside of a painting to answer otherwise.

“Good. I should introduce myself now that we are facing the other properly, _signore_ Morrison.” He grinned. “I am Gabriel Reyes, plague doctor to the city of Firenze, at your service whenever the need should arise.” He gave a mocking bow that lost much of its sting from the elegance and proper form that Gabriel employed at the same time. “Let us hope it doesn’t arise again.”

It was a credit to the quality of his childhood tutors that Jack was able to keep up with the proper protocol. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He heard himself say, distantly. “I do wish we had had a better occasion than the present one, though.”

Gabriel laughed. “Don’t worry, you are hardly the first man I have heard expressing this exact opinion. I have to admit, I am glad whenever I have the opportunity to tell a patient they are not suffering from the plague.”

Jack couldn’t help feeling fond of this strange, lonely doctor. “Not as happy as your patients are feeling. I can personally attest to that.”

“If anyone can, it is you.”

“I guess so.” Jack’s gaze was drawn back to the glass orb with the bees inside. “Which doctor did discover this technique utilizing bees? I never heard of anything like that.”

Amazingly, Gabriel’s cheeks blushed slightly at the question. “Not anyone of renown I’m afraid, as I developed it myself.”

Jack blinked, confounded. “Yourself? How did you decide to include bees?”

“Haha, it was only natural. I keep bees for the times when no one requires my services. I noted their aversion to me whenever I came back from a sick patient. After that, I only had to train them slightly.”

The notion of tamed bees sounded fantastical to Jack’s ears, but he had never understood how bee keepers could go unharmed about their business. But in the end, it was no less fantastical than believing other claims he had heard. Sailors that talk about what they saw: Unicorns that would charge at any man coming close. Constellations safely guiding ships through the night. The splendour of Baghdad, the most beautiful city in the world. He had never laid eyes on any of them, but still he didn’t doubt the stories. Tamed bees were really much more boring when compared to the wonders of the world.

“That sounds like a masterful innovation.” Jack told Gabriel and Gabriel, caught off guard, rewarded him with a genuine smile. The corners of his eyes crinkled with happiness. Jack’s pulse fell violently out of rhythm.

“Thank you.” Gabriel murmured, still blushing. He didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, so Jack took the opportunity to study him in peace.

The break in conversation ended as Jack finally asked: “What will happen now?”

“Now?” Gabriel blinked. “Oh, I see. I am guessing that you have taken ill with a cold. As it has been persistent, I would recommend asking for a proper physician to take a look.”

Jack noticed what Gabriel decided not to mention. “And you?”

“I, on the other hand, need to go back home. As a doctor, I have limited contact with plague victims and as you are no longer in this illustrious group, I can’t in good consciousness stay. Passing on the illness to someone healthy is absolutely a real danger.” Gabriel had become solemn, his face almost as closed off as his mask. “You will have to remain in quarantine a while longer, I’m afraid. About a week, and if you don’t notice any change, you are ready to return to company. Do mind getting a proper doctor visit, however.”

“Can you not make an exception for me? I would hate to have to wait another week.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Impossible, _signore_ Morrison. I repeat, the risk for your health would be too great.”

Jack understood the reasoning, in principle, as he did not want to risk infection in his weakened state, but the thought of never seeing Gabriel again felt like a splinter had lodged into his chest and started festering. It was the feeling of drawing a wonderful sketch and ruining the whole picture with the finishing touch.

Jack wasn’t sure if he was better off one way or another. “Thank you, Doctor Reyes. I will get it checked out.” He hesitated and then pushed on. “You are not allowed to visit patients without the plague, you said. Are you going to perform this duty until you die?”

Gabriel laughed, bright and full of joy. “No, no, I don’t plan to stay that long. I can stop after a reasonable quarantine period and rejoin the normal world, so to speak.”

“Oh. Well, good luck with that when it’s time?” Jack offered, because he really had no other thoughts of consequence to offer.

Gabriel gave him a wave and with a quirked smile secured his mask back on his face. “I might take this step sooner than I thought. I should be on my way. Get well soon, _signore_ Morrison.” He said and promptly closed the door behind himself.

Jack sacked back down onto the bed. His heart was pounding, though he wasn’t sure if it was his current medicine or the loss of contact with Gabriel. He tossed and turned in the bed as he pondered the subject until he finally slipped back to sleep.

+++

After a week of more bedrest and a tonic from the doctor proper, Jack was back to feeling himself. He also drank a copious amount of willow bark tea to lighten his headaches. A messenger to Andrea informed him of Jack’s likely return today. He was late, but that was planned. If he came back looking completely cured, Andrea would be questioning him about his absence. So Jack decided to evoke a partly rumpled, tired impression to underscore his veracity.

Andrea and the other apprentices were surprisingly understanding when he explained. Rumours had spread when Gabriel was seen entering the house in his professional garb. Everyone instead reassured him that they were glad he was still among the living. Jack suspected that it was mostly relief over not having to worry about being infected with the plague through him, but he took all the appreciation he could.

When he came home, the servants took his coat and informed him about a delivery. Jack went to his study. There, resting on top of the table, was an unassuming cylindrical package wrapped in dark blue cloth, topped with an artful knot.

Jack went to inspect it, slowly weighing the object in his hand. It was smooth beneath the wrappings, the weight a comfortable pull that grounded him. He unknotted the cloth and pulled it off.

Inside his package was a wax sealed pottery vessel. Across the front, someone had painted “ _miele_ ” in black paint with careful strokes. Jack admired the gift for a moment before he noticed the note Gabriel – for who else could have send this pot of honey? – had tucked under it. He set the pot aside to read.

> _Signore_ Morrison,
> 
> While I am unable to visit you, I hope your recovery is proceeding well. In the interest of aiding it, I have enclosed some honey from my own hives. It will surely speed up your return to health.
> 
> Your obedient servant,
> 
> _signore_ Gabriel Reyes.

Jack folded the letter with a smile on his lips. He would have to ask the servants who had delivered the package. He would need their services. For now, though, he had to compose a reply.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came forth because I was thinking about what I would write about in a Valentine's Day fic. My country doesn't celebrate Valentine's Day widely and I find it to be somewhat tacky. In the end I was inspired by St. Valentine's list of patronages: "against fainting, beekeepers, happy marriages, love, plague, epilepsy". Now you know who you gonna call when you need a Catholic epilepsy saint! 
> 
> I talked myself out of giving Jack epilepsy on top of the potential plague, but the idea of a beekeeping plague doctor fit Gabe just too well for me to let this go. Thus, I wrote.
> 
> The idea of bees as a way to diagnose the plague came from [recent experiments where bees can accurately diagnose cancer or diabetes](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/can-bees-be-trained-to-sniff-out-cancer-180948269/). They need about 10 minutes of training and since bee husbandry and glass blowing were well practiced skills by the time of the Renaissance, I don't think it is too much of a stretch to have Gabe discover this on his own.
> 
> However, before you leave, please imagine the conversation Gabriel had with the glass blower to get his bee bowl made:
> 
> Gabe: I need you to make a glass sphere with two inner chambers.  
> Glass blower: ...okay?  
> Gabe: and they need to connect to the outside. one of them needs a spout  
> Glass blower: .................. I think I'm following. No idea why you want this made, but hey, it's your money, pal!  
> Gabe: also the glass tubes must be wide enough to fit bees through them.  
> Glass blower: Wat.  
> Gabe: what, it's a normal request  
> Glass blower: You can just admit you are into alchemy, you know, no need to make up something about bees.  
> Gabe: wat.


End file.
